How To Maximize Modern Sales Effectiveness And Productivity, with Mat Singer, Episode #11
The Modern Selling Podcast
English - April 23, 2019 10:00 - 49 minutes - 39.8 MB - ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsMarketing Business Management personalbranding contentmarketing digitalsales digitalselling linkedinprofilemakeover sales salespodcast salestips salestraining sellingwithsocial Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
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The leaders of every organization want to maximize sales effectiveness and productivity. But the ever-changing digital sales landscape can make it hard to keep up. That’s why I wanted to bring Mat Singer, Senior Director of Sales Effectiveness for CenturyLink on as my guest on this episode of #SellingWithSocial. Mat manages a team of 100 people and his focus is on improving the productivity of the global sales organization within the company. Can you think of a better person to speak to this topic?
In this conversation, Mat and I dig into the role good fundamental sales skills play in enhancing sales effectiveness, how technology is impacting the way sales training and implementation happen, and why social selling is not going away any time soon - and what sales leaders should be doing about that fact. Join us for this great conversation. Mat knows how to speak on a level that sales managers and sales team members alike can grasp. You won’t regret listening.
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Why True Sales Effectiveness Is Not A Mythical UnicornAs you know from listening to this show and from being out there in the trenches, the impact digital has had on the sales world is nothing short of revolutionary. Existing sales toolsets are changing all the time and new products are introduced almost daily. The tech we have at our disposal is important to sales effectiveness because it solves many problems, but many of the things that keep a sales team from being effective can’t be fixed by new tools.
I wasn’t at all surprised to hear Mat say that as important as the tools are, many more sales opportunities come from practicing sales fundamentals well.
Prospecting - Qualifying - Developing relationships - How managers coach their teams - Account planning - Call planning - these are the basics that amplify sales effectiveness regardless of the tools you use. When you and your team focus on doing these basics well, THEN and only then you can move on to address the other problems that can be solved by technology and tools.
Do You Know How To Integrate Your Sales Technique With Your Sales Technology?Once you have made the effort to ensure your entire sales team is applying the same level of diligence to their fundamental sales skills, you need to integrate those efforts into your tech stack effectively. This used to be a daunting task because of all the “paper artifacts” and data entry required to make it happen. But Mat explains how his team uses Salesforce and another tool - Altify - to makes it super simple for sales data to be gathered and reported.
Here’s the beautiful part - It’s integrated into their CRM, so the data is readily available for use as part of their sales fundamentals. It's an example of sales technique working with sales technology to maximize sales effectiveness.
An added benefit is that this process creates transparency. That is KEY for enabling sales managers to coach their teams effectively because they are able to know the exact metrics for each sales rep and work on the specific areas that need improvement.
In Mat’s case, his teams are dealing with bigger, global customers. The integration we’re describing enables them to collaborate among their worldwide team to support the customer on multiple levels and with multiple team members. That alone increases sales effectiveness tremendously.
Sales Productivity Is Magnified When Managers Have The Right Data And ToolsIt’s not uncommon for sales managers to set appointments with team members to go over their most significant accounts together. But it’s not always been easy to do effectively because of the way the pertinent data was stored and managed. Managers and reps are able to go deeper and be more effective in their reviews when they have the right data and tools.
In order to ensure that data is available, Mat says sales managers need to have what he calls a “religious” level of belief when it comes to applying standards to everyone. It’s vital for sales reps to be held accountable to their calling plans and other best practices if they are going to contribute to the entire company’s sales goals.
You may also have a tendency to think that your superstar sales leaders can be let off the hook in these areas, but don’t give in to that temptation. Those high volume sellers are often unconsciously competent. That means they are talented enough to quickly integrate best practices into everything they do and your standards will be quickly assimilated if you stick to your guns.
Social Media Is Not Going Away. Sales Leaders Must Learn To Use It WellWhen I asked Mat to describe how he’s training his team to use social for selling he pointed out that his company (CenturyLink) is known by many as a telephone company. But these days they are providing services and products that go way beyond landline telephone service. For that reason, one of their primary objectives on social is to share content that presents the company as the innovative technology company they have become. This is a move to create brand awareness but also to put their alternate services on the radar of existing and new customers alike. Every sales organization can use social to the same end.
We also have to admit, social media is a permanent part of the lives of younger generations and they are the people who are the consumers of today and tomorrow. Organizations who learn to utilize social to engage with them are the organizations that will win.
Finally, when it comes to the sales effectiveness of social, the data doesn’t lie. There is an unmistakable ROI when social selling tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator are used by sales organizations. It’s so effective because it enables you to monitor prospective buyers all the way down to the individual interactions they have with your team. Once you develop a way to train your sales team how to pick up on the cues you see in the data, they will know better what to do with it to engage clients in their buying journey.
If you listen to this conversation you’ll gain tremendous insight into how the world-class team at CenturyLink is building a system of sales effectiveness for the modern age.
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